ISO 50001 has Transformed Employee Attitudes and Energy Use at npower

npower is one of the leading energy companies in Britain, serving an average of 5.1 million business and residential accounts with gas and electricity. npower recently announced that its compliance with ISO 50001 has played a key role in the company’s efforts to lower its energy use and reduce its carbon footprint, whilst transforming the attitudes of its staff.

What is ISO 50001?

ISO 50001 is an energy management systems standard. Using energy efficiently helps organisations tackle climate change and conserve their resources through the development of an EnMS, energy management system. ISO 50001 creates a standard and framework requirement for establishing, enforcing and enhancing energy management systems. From following the framework, npower has been able to set and surpass its carbon intensity targets.

In 2015, npower set a carbon reduction target of 50% and as a result of complying with the requirements of ISO 50001 it successfully reduced its carbon intensity by 56%.

Due to the monumental carbon reduction success, npower has now set a new target of another 25% by 2020. Whilst hitting the targets, there has also been an ongoing behavioural change amongst staff - which was initially driven by data management.

Data management has made the staff excited and eager to make their contributions to their new set targets.

Improving Employees Relationships with Energy Efficiency

Combining the enhanced data management system and ISO framework has played a key part in improving employees relationships with energy efficiency - having more control on data means they have more control on management, both financially and environmentally. This is very effective for the npower employees as they believe that ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’.

The Environmental Action Sustainability and You (EASY) campaign is one of the main contributing factors in igniting this behavioural change. The campaign focuses on the ‘everyday’ activities which staff can carry out to monitor and reduce their energy use.

These energy changes are explored further through the use of league tables, allowing npower to monitor the energy consumption within each site. However, due to the complexity of each site, the league tables are unable to measure personal engagement and accountability - which means npower have to monitor its focus groups to oversee any behavioural change.

As a result of the rise in employee attitudes and the ISO 50001 framework complementing npower’s sustainability agenda, the company is now on the way to further reduce its energy reduction commitments and reach its 25% carbon reduction goal by 2020.

For organisations looking to become ISO 50001 certified, 2EA® can ensure your EnMS meets the standard requirements and arrange an accredited body to provide an assessment. Our auditors are BSI trained and can help implement your Energy Management System (EnMS) as a whole system, tailored to your organisation’s needs, with achievable targets set and regular reviews.